Gone but Not Forgotten
by lokandgot
Summary: She stares at the three headstones before her. Two worn down from years of weather, but the third is new. Still shining from its polish. The earth in front of it still fresh and turned over. You take a step closer, focused on the newest addition. Your eyes scan across your name, beautifully etched into the stone. She buried you with her parents.
1. Chapter 1

You're a planner. Not one of those "I've got a concrete bunker 70 feet below my house just in case of a nuclear apocalypse" kind of planner. But rather the "I've got my life figured out to the second" kind.

And your plan went a little something like this: graduate college by 21. Be done with law school by 24. Make partner of a firm by 27. Die at the ripe old age of 94. That was it. That was our plan. And you were very content with that plan too. Until it was rocked a little off course when you met a rather dangerously beautiful blonde with a knack for art and getting in trouble.

So of course, with that little tidbit added, you had to adjust somethings. Shift some plans back. Graduate by 21. Be done with law school by 24. Marry Clarke by 26. Make partner of a firm by 27. Have your first kid by 30. Celebrate your 50th anniversary by 76. Die at the ripe old of 94.

There. Perfect. The perfect plan. The irrefutable and undeniable perfect plan.

And well… you got the first four. So perhaps your good karma had been used up, but the dying at the ripe old age of 94 was most likely not going to happen. No.

Instead your plan had been changed. Forced by the hand of Mother Nature. And there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. Which was the part that hurt the most. Because all your life you had decided what happened and when it happened. But now?

Well it went a little something like this: Graduate by 21. Be done with law school by 24. Marry Clarke by 26. Make partner by 27. Die in a flaming metal inferno 45,000 feet up by 28.

That? That was your new plan.

* * *

"Clarke?"

You hated it. You hated how needy and whiny your voice sounded right now, but you need to hear her voice one last time. You needed to hear the voice of the woman that had stolen your heart right from your chest.

No.

You shouldn't say it like that. She didn't steal it. You gave it to her freely. Willingly. Because you wouldn't want anyone else to have it. It was hers and hers alone. And it would always be hers to protect.

"Clarke?" you try again, only hearing a terrible, scratchy feedback. Of course now your phone, the one that had cost a fortune because of its supposed better call quality, decides not to work. Normally, you would laugh at the irony. But now isn't really the time for such frivolous activities.

You end the call and in one last desperate attempt try again.

It rings a few moments, a few torturous moments, before you hear the click of the call being accepted on the other line. It's silent for a moment. But a grainy voice calls out your name and you have never heard something quite as beautiful in your life.

"Lexa? Lexa, is that you? Oh God. Please tell me you're okay," the words cry through.

You want nothing more than to reassure her. To tell her that yes, everything is fine. But as you look out your window and see the flames, see the hopelessness in the eyes of the people sitting around you. You know there is no way you can lie to her.

"Hi, baby," you whisper over the noise of the screaming passengers.

There's a sob and you can picture her now. Sitting on her art stool, clad in her painters smock. The ridiculous thing covered in years' worth of paint and ink. Blonde hair tinted white from the afternoon sun shining through the bay windows. Phone pressed to her ear. She looks glorious. Stunning. Other worldly.

What you wouldn't give to see that one more time. And oh how you wish under different circumstances.

"Lexa. Please," she begs, "Please tell me that isn't your flight."

You're silent, knowing full well that she can hear the mantras of 'please save us' coming through the line. So you ignore the question. Because that isn't how you want your last conversation to go.

"Do you remember how we first met?" you ask instead.

And perhaps that wasn't the best way to go either, because her sobbing worsens and your heart tugs painfully to be by her side. Holding her. Comforting her.

But your power on, because you need this. You need her to know. Because you are afraid that you never said it enough.

"It was so cold that night. And I swear we were the only people crazy enough to be out on the streets, yet we somehow managed to run right into each other," you chuckle, feeling the tears well into your eyes. "All I remember was seeing a flash of blonde hair before I woke up in your arms, head pounding with a screaming headache, and your beautiful blue eyes looking down at me. Your smile the only apology needed." You pause and sniffle because, God, that night changed your life forever. "Do you remember what you said to me?"

There is only silence and you fear that you lost her. Lost the connection. But then her ragged breath breaks through and you can almost see the ghost of a smile on her lips, "Are you passed out on the sidewalk or are you my snow angel?" she chuckles, a sad watery thing. Nothing like the warming laughs that you are used to hearing.

"That's right," you smile. Because of all things a woman could say to you after she knocks you over, causing you to hit your head and black out, she goes with a pick up line. You knew you were a goner then and there.

You can hear her crying again, the force of her sobs shaking her shoulders, making her breaths short and choppy. God, you wish you were there. You wish you could pull her in close and kiss away the tears. You wish you could lift her chin and look into her eyes, because they were always bluer when wet. You wish you could whisper sweet nothings into her ear, until the shaking and the shuddering stopped and all that was left a was a peaceful sigh.

But that was not meant to be anymore.

"Clarke," you say again, never tiring of the way her voice feels on your tongue. "Clarke, I love you so much," you say, because the screams are getting louder and the ground so much closer.

"I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you and from every moment on. Not a day goes by where I don't love you. I just," you stop. "I just really need you to know that."

"I know, Lexa. I know," she sobs, her voice choked.

You raise your voice a little, so you can be heard, hoping to drown everything else out, "Baby," you cry, the tears flushing down your face, "Baby, I'm not going to be here much longer. And there is so much I want to say to you. There is so much I want to do with you. I just want you to know I love you. I love you so goddamn much, okay. I love you."

You keep the phone pressed hard to your ear, her words and her I love you's, drowning out the groans from the planes, the roar from the fires, the prayers of the people.

"I love you, Lexa," you hear her say. No sweeter words have ever crossed your ears.

You close your eyes and think of the face that held your heart. And you think off all the plans you had. All of the plans you had made. And you can't help but think that the best thing that ever happened to you was something that wasn't even planned out. It was random. A fluke in fate. A random passing in the street. A chance meeting. All leading to the best days of your life.

The plain gives one last almighty groan, it's final attempt to keep you afloat, and you hear her words ring loud and clear,

"I love you, Lexa," she says and you know it's true. You know it's true.


	2. Chapter 2

There is a moment, right after you die, where everything stills. Peace settles over like a gentle summer's breeze, drifting over you in a warm wave. Quietly, it soaks into you. Filling every inch, until you are almost bursting with this newfound feeling. It breathes a new life into you, pushing out everything else. Slowly, clipping out everything that has you tethered to the earth. Your greatest tragedies, your triumphs, your enemies, your loves. Every last one until you are free. Floating. Nothing left to tie you down.

It whispers into your ear, taunting and tantalizing. Begging you into staying, into living a life with no fears. Without pain or heart break. And it is tempting. So, so tempting to just stay.

But there is a pull deep in your chest, pleading for you to ignore the words.

You are presented with a choice. Two doors. One will take you back. The other lets you stay. Floating. Drifting. Finally at peace.

It's not a hard decision. Not for you. You weren't done. Your life wasn't over. You had so much more you wanted to do. So much more to live for. You had only just met her. Only just started your life with her. The one and only true love in your life. You needed more time.

You always needed more time.

With a decisive nod you choose door one. The choice makes the serenity shatter. Splinter into a thousand pieces.

The warmth starts to retract, leaving your body breathless and heaving. The cold punching into your stomach, tears flowing freely down your face.

You aren't given any guidance, only a warning that when you return it will not be as it once was. And one solitary rule. Do not reveal yourself to the living. No matter what.

That was it. That was all they left you with. Banishing you because of your choice.

Just as quickly as you arrived, you were sent back.

A terrible pull lurches in your stomach. The heat that was encompassing your body is gone. The cold crawling into the deepest crevasses of your bones. You feel like you are spiraling. Everything is out of your control. Lights swirl past, blinking and flashing, blinding you. Sounds hammer into the air. Each noise spikes and crescendos with your movement. You're spinning, you're twisting. Falling. Falling.

Nausea surges through you and your brain clouds. Your skin feels like it's been lit on fire, but your bones are practically shaking from the freeze. It feels like you are being clawed apart from the inside.

It's too much. It's all too much and you scream and writhe. Desperate for any relief. Wishing, praying to go back.

All at once it stops.

The air around you quietens. It stills. No longer a maelstrom of disaster, but rather a lowly howl.

And just like waking up, you're back.

* * *

Slowly, ever so slowly, you open your eyes. It's dark, grey sky and clouds blocking the sun's rays from warming the earth. The day's melancholy affecting those trying to go about their days, dressed in black and permanent frowns plastered on their faces. Thunder rumbles, deep and foreboding, threatening a storm to come. You blink a few times, trying to rid yourself of the haze that has settled over you. You're standing in the middle of a street, the buildings around it vaguely familiar. You had only been there once or twice, but you recognize it all the same. People are milling all around you, but none seem to notice your heaving form or the way your legs shake and wobble. You stumble over to a nearby lamppost, reaching out for its pole as support while you catch your breath. Fingers ghost through the metal, appearing on the other side, your body lurching forward at the unexpected loss of support. Trying again, you can only feel the cold of the metal, the texture of the scratches etched into its siding, your fingers gliding through the lamp post as if there was nothing there. Panic settles over you, your breath picking up in pace. Stepping away you place a hand on your chest, a desperate attempt to calm the stuttering of your lungs, only to find that where there was once a beating living heart, there is nothing but silence.

"Oh my god," you cry out, clutching at your chest, blinking away the tears rapidly working their way to the surface.

"Oh my god."

You stumble down the sidewalk, the passing walkers a mere blur in your vison. Little do you know that they walk straight through you, only to come out the other side with an unnatural shiver. Your feet are blindly guiding you, following the warm glow that your shocked mind is too disjointed to recognize. You mindlessly make your way past the buildings, away from the crowds, deeper into the cold of the fall and the green of the city. A wrought iron gate lies ahead and you briefly think about how you are going to get past the thick lock keeping the gates closed, but when you attempt to pick the lock up you just sink through. Your body moving through the bars as if through water. You appear on the other side, slightly daze, and a little amazed.

Hundreds upon hundreds of headstones, stick up from the muddy, dying grass like sentries on guard. It hits you why you know this place.

You had only been here once, many, many years ago. Clarke had asked you to meet her parent's and you had full heartedly agreed, eager to make the best impression. Only to find out that two headstones and a beautiful poem of meeting one another again was what was waiting for you.

Your feet move again, but this time it is on your own accord, because you know why you are here. You desperately wish and pray and hope that all of this is a dream and that the worst thoughts going through your mind are nothing but nightmares. But as you approach closer you are hit with a wave of warmth. It washes over you. Makes it easier to breath. It's like having a burst of life thrust into your heartless chest and you think you know why.

The minute your eyes land on her, the stifling air lifts, allowing you to breathe. Everything seems brighter. The colors more vibrant, the sky less gray.

Clarke.

She's wearing all black, a color she hardly wears because it makes her sad. And you know that this isn't a dream.

The golden tresses of her hair sparkle in the dapples of sunlight peeking through the clouds. There is a smile on her face, small and sad. And her eyes. The once vibrant blues of the ocean are pale and dark, ringed with red, glimmering with tears. Sad just like the smile on her face. Black shadows color under her eyes and you know she hasn't slept in days.

She stares at the three headstones before her. Two worn down from years of weather, but the third is new. Still shining from its polish. The earth in front of it still fresh and turned over.

You take a step closer, focused on the newest addition. Your eyes scan across your name, beautifully etched into the stone. She buried you with her parents. The only family she had, now laid to rest with the one she lost years ago.

No. No this is not a nightmare.

Clarke jerks forward suddenly, a sob ripping through her lungs and echoing around the grounds, unheard except by your ears. She crumbles to the ground, one hand clutching at her chest, the other gripping the grass beneath her. The sobs wrack across her body, making her shoulders shake with their might. You reach out for her, desperate to hold, to comfort, but your fingers sparkle and glimmer as they dip beneath her skin.

She sits up with a shaky breath, looking down at her arm where your hand had just passed through. Her fingers hover over the skin. A reverent look appears on her face before it crumbles.

"Why'd you leave me," she cries, angry hot tears pouring down her face. "Why'd you leave me?" She looks up from her arm and her eyes lock onto yours.

"Clarke, I never left you."


	3. Chapter 3

Blue eyes are unwavering as they flicker across your face. But you know they are unseeing.

She runs a slightly muddy hand across her forehead before she looks back to the grave.

"I can still feel you," she exhales, struggling over the tightness in her throat. "I swear I can feel you holding me at night. And I swear I can hear you talking to me. I feel like I'm going insane." A shaky hand picks at some grass, shredding the blades between her fingers. "I'm going insane without you. I-I don't know what to do with… with myself."

"I'm still here, Clarke," you nudge her jaw with a knuckle, a useless gesture to get her to look up, "I'm never leaving you."

She gasps out the moment your finger brushes against her face, her eyes squeezing tight, "I know you're here, Lexa. Why don't you just show yourself to me?"

The words are on the tip of your tongue. You would if you could. You would be by her side in an instant. But with a startling clarity you remember the one rule you were given. Never reveal yourself to the living. And if Clarke can feel you, if she can "hear you" you are already breaking that rule. And you aren't really one to tempt fate like that. You have no idea what would happen if you did reveal yourself. Not to mention you don't even know how.

A part deep inside of you knows that if given the chance you would show yourself to Clarke, no matter the consequences.

She soothes out the furrow in her brow, before standing.

"It still doesn't feel real," she whispers. "It just doesn't feel real."

* * *

Clarke doesn't move those first couple of days. In fact she doesn't leave the confines of your… her bed. She stares blankly, unblinkingly at your side. Streams of tears flow down her face, never stopping and never easing up. White knuckles curl around the cover of your pillow before she drags it closer, tucking it close to her body.

"I miss you so much," she whispers, burying her face into the fabric. "It hurts. It hurts so much. I feel like my heart has been ripped out of my chest. And all I want to do is just see you one last time. To just kiss you one last time."

Her face turns more into the pillow so that her words are muffled, strangled, "Sometimes I wake up and I'll go into the kitchen expecting you to be there. With that stupid Mr. Tea mug I got you because you hate coffee. You hate coffee, but you always made a pot for me. And for a moment. That fraction of a second, it doesn't hurt so much."

You lay down on the bed and face her. God you wish you could just curl your fingers into her hair. That always, always calmed her down.

She lets out a sob, adjusting her head against the pillow once more, "It still smells like you."

You reach out and rest your hand on top of hers still clutching to the sheets, "I'm not leaving you again, Clarke. I can promise you that. I will not leave you again."

Red rimmed eyes open at your words and search your side of the bed, eyes flickering with a hopeful spark that you would just suddenly appear. "I know," she whispers. "I know."

* * *

Raven stops by every day. Making sure Clarke has eaten something. She'll bring the latest newspaper every once in a while. But mostly she just lies across from Clarke and hold her hand.

* * *

Clarke gets up one day and wanders to the kitchen. She looks lost for a moment before she goes over to the fridge and opens the cabinet above.

She finishes half a bottle of tequila before she passes out on the kitchen floor with tears in her eyes and her phone in her hand, playing the last voicemail you sent her on repeat.

Raven finds her like that the next morning, holding back tears of her own.

* * *

You'd been watching Clarke all day. Watching her struggle to put the bottle down and struggling even more picking it back up. You watched her pace and cry and lie on the couch, staring at nothing.

And it hurt.

It hurt so bad to watch her. Knowing that there was absolutely nothing you could do because you died. You _died_. And you left Clarke all alone. And now. Now you are a lost soul trapped in the world of the living. Unable to comfort your wife. Unable to touch her or feel her or kiss away her tears. And it hurt so much, that if you still had a beating heart you know that watching Clarke struggle like this would have stopped it in its tracks.

She had set the bottle down some time ago, before wandering into your room, a lost and haunted look in her eyes. She emerged carrying your favorite sweater. The one that was so old and raggedy that it stretched below your knees and had multiple holes in the sleeves. You always had a bad habit of pulling the cuffs around your hands. Clarke always complained that you were stretching it out and ruining it, but you insisted it added character.

"Oh, Clarke," you whisper, your voice crackling with regret, etched with an anger for getting on that goddamn airplane in the first place.

She looks up. Ears perked, eyes brightening for the quickest of seconds as she looks around, convinced that she heard your voice in the silence of your apartment, before they fall back into their lifelessness.

"If you won't show yourself, then I'll just have to come to you." Her feet shuffle in place for a few moments before her jaw locks and she storms into the kitchen. A determination in her step that you haven't seen in weeks. Her gaze locks onto something on the countertop.

You follow behind her, feet soundlessly making their way across the old, squeaky, wooden floors. You barely get around the island when you see the glint of the knife in her hand, hovering just above her wrist.

"Clarke! NO! No, no, no, no, no!" You shout racing to her side and reaching out for the knife only to have your hands fall through the blade. You scream and tear at your hair, completely unaware of how your skin is starting to prickle. How that uncomfortable pull is starting to pool in the bottom of your stomach.

"God, Clarke, please. Please. I'm begging you. Put down the knife!" You choke out, staggering back from the sudden pain in your chest. It knocks the wind completely out of you, forcing your hands onto your knees, hunched over and struggling to get air.

The clattering of the knife on the ground makes your head shoot up, fearing the absolute worst. But what you see instead, makes your lungs stop completely.

"Lexa," she breathes. Red ringed eyes bore into you and this time they don't see through you. They lock on your own and she reaches out. Disbelief streaming down her face in wet tears.

"Lexa," she says again, her voice catching.

All at once she is running towards you.

"Wait, Clarke," you plead painfully aware of what is going to happen.

She reaches you, arms stretched out wide and grasping for you. But the minute she attempts to pull you into her embrace, her arms rush through your body and she goes stumbling past you.

You close your eyes, willing the tears to stay at bay and turn around.

Clarke is staring at you. Her eyes are wild and confused and hurt, so deeply hurt. She tries again and her hand simply cuts through your chest and floats out the other side.

"Oh my god," she sobs, "oh my god. I-I-I can see you, I can hear you. But I can't… I can't touch you."

"Clarke," you try.

"I-I-I can't," the tears are flowing freely now, "I can't touch you."

Her arms wrap around herself and she falls to the ground, her eyes never leaving yours.

You sink with her, fingers itching to reach out.

"I'm so sorry, baby," you whisper, "I-I never meant for any of this to happen. I never meant to leave you." Your fingers prick, no longer willing to stay at bay. They reach out and gently cup her cheek, thumb brushing just under her eye.

Her chest shakes as she takes in a jerky breath and she closes her eyes, moving her hand until it is over yours, sinking into your translucent skin.

"I can feel you," she says, leaning into your touch. "I can feel you."


End file.
